Age is relative, right?

Even Webster is incapable of nailing down a specific example of ‘age’. Rather it covers all the possible bases within the English language; good on you Webster.

As somewhat frustrating as that is, it fits doesn’t it? How does one define age, truly? Sure we’ve all heard, and probably said things such as ‘age is just a number’, ‘act your age’, ‘you’re as young as you feel’, etc. All these things are true at varying times in our lives, but how exactly can you define age?

After some interesting encounters one day a few weeks ago this thought began rolling around 

my brain. That day I had interacted with people of nearly every decade of ‘age’, but the irony struck me in the evening. One of the conversations I had during the day was with a very precocious three year old that’s going on thirty. During our conversation she was asking about people’s ages and I asked her how old she thought was considered old. This is a deadly question I know, but I wanted to see what her thoughts were. She pulled a number that lives somewhere in the mid-twenties and said it was super old. I had to smile at that and tell her then that I was definitely ‘old’ to her; a point that she argued and I happily allowed it. The epiphanic moment happened that evening when I was conversing with someone in their mid-fifties. During the course of conversation after a comment I made they acknowledged its truth, but did so with emphasis on the wisdom of my youth. That got me really thinking.

In the course of less than twenty four hours, I’d been at both ends of the spectrum. I even said it to the mid-fifties person. To someone somewhere I’m supremely old and ancient, not quite irrelevant, but not quite applicable and yet to someone else I’m considered extremely young. It’s very much like seasonings isn’t it? You prepare a fresh seasoning for something and it’s so robust at the start but over time as it is stored and used the flavor begins to fade slightly. This is not true of the person I was talking with, but the irony was and still is not lost on me that no matter if you’re considered very young or very old the practicality of your usefulness wanes and people tend to take you for granted, or not give you the appropriate consideration of importance.

And so, as I find myself closer to the forties decade than not I still ask the question. How exactly can you define age?